With this past weekend’s screening of director Edgar Wright’s test footage for his long in-development comic book adaption Ant-Man at San Diego Comic Con and Marvel Studio’s release of some title art for the film, I feel safe in saying that we can take that as a tacit admission that the film is actually, finally happening.
But when will it happen? Simon Pegg thinks he has an answer. In a tweet over the weekend, he stated that Wright would be directing Ant-Man next year, after he finishes work on their soon-to-shoot collaboration The World’s End this fall.
As the two have been collaborators for several years, it is safe to say that Pegg may have some inside information shared with him by Wright. Though as the World’s End projected schedule has been in place for a while now, it does just seem logical for Ant-Man’s production to follow it at some point. More than likely, Pegg was addressing fan questions as to whether Ant-Man would take precedence over World’s End.
That leaves us with the question as to how much later will the Ant-Man shooting take place after World’s End wraps. That would probably depend on exactly where Marvel wants to slot it into their release schedule. If Marvel sticks with their two films a year schedule, we won’t be seeing Ant-Man until 2015 at the earliest. Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World already have the 2013 slots and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the just announced Guardians Of The Galaxy are set for 2014.
Everyone is working under the assumption that we will be seeing The Avengers 2 in 2015, but that has yet to be confirmed. But if so, does Marvel slot Ant-Man in before that film or will it be used to kick off the studio’s post-Avengers 2 “Phase Three?”
Or it could be that the assumption about Avengers 2 is off. It took four years from Iron Man to get to the Avengers. And Marvel was able to set up the world needed for the Avengers with that amount of time. I’d expect “Phase 2” to take just as long. Meaning, Ant-Man and maybe even Black Panther arriving before Avengers 2, and Avengers 2 arriving some time in 2016.